Awakening and Insight: Zen Buddhism and Psychotherapy

the position that all phenomena are dependent on a context for their

substantiation and leave it at that.

(Young-Eisendrath and Hall 1991:167)

Conclusion

In my work, including preparing future Buddhist ministers to provide counseling to
their sangha members, I have seen how Buddhist teachings and practices are not
simply antique curiosities. Rather, they are psychologically relevant for individuals
struggling with their own present difficulties. As a living intellectual tradition,
Buddhist thought needs to both be accurate in interpreting its teachings and practices
in psychological terms, and reflect on the value of psychological theories and
psychotherapeutic practices. For its part, psychology can also expand the range of
human experience it considers, and test its theories against the question of whether
they can be applied cross-culturally. We cannot predict, nor should we prejudge the
possible outcomes of this interaction.
However, we can know that the value of the interaction will be limited by whether
or not adequate attention is paid to the social, cultural, and historical locations of
both Buddhism and psychology. The discourse on the relation between Buddhism
and psychology is basically an interpretive project, and all interpretation references
the cultural, social, and historical concerns and preconceptions of the interpreter. For
contemporary Westerners, the question of Buddhism and psychology is an attempt
to establish a relation between our own present concerns and preconceptions and the
teachings and practices of the tradition. We need to understand the tradition in ways
that are relevant to ourselves, and at the same time avoid simply seeing ourselves in
the mirror image of the exotic other. In this fashion we can find our own middle path.

References

Brazier, David (1995) Zen Therapy: Transcending the Sorrows of the Human Mind, New York:
Wiley.
Buddhaghosa (1975, reprint 1999) The Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga), Seattle: BPS
Pariyatti Editions.
Campbell, Donald T (1996) ‘Can we overcome worldview incommensurability/relativity in
trying to understand the other?’, in Richard Jessor, Anne Colby, and Richard Shweder
(eds), Ethnography and Human Development: Context and Meaning in Social Inquiry,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Corbett, Lionel (1996) The Religious Function of the Psyche, London and New York: Routledge.
Cushman, Philip (1995) Constructing the Self, Constructing America: A Cultural History of
Psychotherapy, Reading, MA: Addison Wesley.

180 LOCATING BUDDHISM, LOCATING PSYCHOLOGY